green of the fade, green of her eyes
by LiluyeAsala
Summary: Another mighty war fortress is falling thanks to the tears in the Fade, and Cassandra is determined to discover the catalyst of this particular tear.


Prompt via anonymous on tumblr: Solange/Cass - love at first sight/swordpoint?

I do not own Dragon Age.

* * *

Cassandra had never much cared for the color green. Her distaste for the shade had no childhood trauma or negative association attatched, she just never had found it terribly appealing. Why green when you could choose another color, a color such as blue, like the night sky or like a proud banner to wave?

But this night sky - it was not anywhere near the soft dark blue that she wanted.

No, this sky was like the Wilds: murkish and jagged-split with flashes of fragmented firefly-neon lights and heavy booms of deep thunder that made Cassandra's bones rattle. The air swam with shouts and sparks and debris and the unearthly shrieks of demons or abominations, and cries for help spouted profusely from the left and right. Searing explosions that shook the ground beneath the Seeker's feet set the stone bridges and earthen hills atremor, and when she turned back to order her troops, she saw a whole lot of scared little boys in oversized helmets instead of the boisterous and able soldiers she had initiated just a few short months prior.

No sympathy. They joined the Inquisition to make a difference and to help save the world from bursting at the seams, and Maker damn her to hell if she wouldn't make it happen.

Cassandra shoved the sweaty lock of dark hair that had drifted into her face back roughly, and opened her mouth, fully intending to bark out some motivation that would kick these soldiers in the pants and get them moving, when one of them - Christos, a younger soldier who didn't appear as terrified as the rest - pointed over her shoulder, his eyes wide with an interesting mixture of fear and awe.

"By the Maker," another soldier gasped, squinting to better see. Cassandra narrowed her eyes and turned, only to catch a quick glimpse of a huge fractured bolt of white-green lightning collide with something on the decreipt stone bridge amidst the ruins of what had once been a fabled fortress that withstood dozens of battles. The bolt slammed into the old stone, and just before the resulting wave of crackling force threw everyone in her small battalion back a few paces, Cassandra could make out the silhouette of someone standing within the flare of light, completely still and a shadow of pure black engulfed in tainted white.

_Who...?_

And then some flying chunk of debris whacked Cassandra in the head and everything flickered painfully dark.

"...Seeker! Seeker!"

Someone was shaking her roughly by the shoulder. She forced her eyes open, cringing at the throbbing sensation on the side of her head. Hovering over her was the blurred figure of Christos, his helmet gone and his pale curly hair dangling in his worried eyes.

"Seeker, there's been a surge of demons, walking corpses, after that one big explosion!" Christos shouted, his voice muted and vague as explosions flared in Cassandra's spotted side vision. "Half of the men have gone off to fight them! They haven't come back and everyone else is terrified!"

"Help me up, soldier," Cassandra ordered, "And for the love of Andraste, calm yourself down before you give yourself as well as me, a heart attack!"

Christos' cheeks flared bright pink, which was saying something considering the boy's fair complexion and already heat-flushed skin. He extended his arm and Cassandra grasped it, hoisting herself to her feet. The throbbing in her head increased, but she did not falter. There was no time to hesitate, and she had been hit worse before.

She glanced briefly down towards the stone bridge, which had somehow transformed into an ocean of glowing green-and-black rubble with a few scattered pairs of people and demons fighting for their lives. She turned back to the leftover soldiers, making eye contact with each one of them - which wasn't hard, considering there hadn't been a ton of troops with her to begin with.

"There is something important down there, and that is what we are really contending with tonight," she said, gesturing towards the luminescent impact point. The men shifted uncomfortably, and Cassandra nearly growled.

"You are not little boys with wooden swords!" she exclaimed. "You are grown men and I expect you to act as such! This is your time to fight!"

She pointed to the shattered bridge, which was nearly swarming with walking corpses and glistening, putrid demons.

"Go! Now!"

And the soldiers did. They poured down the hill - the true warriors first, yanking their longswords and shields off of their shoulders and brandishing them with fearsome cries as they engaged an enemy. The rogue fighters followed after, their steps steady and agile, dual daggers and crossbows glinting dully in the light of the scattered flames and lightning flares. Cassandra went last, her feet slamming down onto the earth and clapping loudly against the stone as she charged into the frey with her own weapon hoisted high, a shout of her own flying through the cacophony of the surrounding fights.

Cassandra swung her sword, slicing through the first corpse - more like a skeleton - with ease and sending bones scattering across the debris-ridden ground. She leapt forward into the next battle, bringing her full weight down through the sword into the torso (did rage demons really have torsos?) of the next fiend, and yanked it out just in time to parry the attack of whatever distorted creature it was that tried to attack from behind her. She could feel her lip curl in unbridled anger as she pivoted around to see the newest foe, a recently dead corpse of a templar with eyes glowing a demonic sulfur color and curdled blood caked across the side of his head.

She jabbed at the corpse, only to be sluggishly blocked again with the dead templar's sword. A growl tore up her throat as she slashed downwards, harder, and when she was blocked again her vision flashed with red on the edges. She jabbed and cut and - duck, Cassandra! - finally her sword met with dead flesh and the corpse staggered back a step, faltering in apparent surprise. Cassandra lunged forward, her sword rising above her shoulders as she slashed to the left, to the right, each blow making contact and leaving a trail of criss-crossing, black-oozing marks across the dead templar's chest. The corpse tried to keep fighting, but Cassandra brought her weapon down hard on the sword wielding arm, iron cleaving through decayed flesh and bone and sending the sword as well as the arm from the wrist down thudding to the floor with an ugly, wet slap. Cassandra couldn't stop, though, this unsanctionable demon needed to be pulverized, utterly destroyed...

"Seeker!" a voice called. Cassandra jerked, her vision clearing of the haze that she hadn't realized was there. She blinked twice, noticing belatedly that her face was coated in cold, rancid blood that mingled with hot, sticky sweat. Her once-opponent was nothing more than a limp pile of congealed blood and splintered bone, and she stood there, her sword half drenched in ugly red and her chest heaving.

"Seeker," the voice called again, and she turned away from the now permanently dead templar, recognizing the speaker as the young soldier from before, Christos. To his credit, he seemed relatively unfazed by the gore she was liberally coated in. "The perimeter is secured!"

"Take half of the men and have them round up survivors," she responded, her voice cracking almost embarrassingly. "Have the other half report to me immediately."

"Yes, ma'am," he answered, and then rattled off a series of shouts in various directions. A few distant shapes of men amidst the smoke and chaos responded in kind, and Cassandra made a mental note to see him rewarded for his more-than-cooperation. Within minutes, Cassandra had nine men gathered before her. Some of them leaned heavily on others, but they all looked at her with the same amount of confusion, pain, and hardened fear. Cassandra made sure all were paying attention, and then turned towards the bridge, which was now completely abandoned save for the gratuitous heap of black and glowing rubble.

"Your task is to investigate every inch of that crash site," she commanded. "There was something there that caused the strike, and it is your job to find out what.

(Or who.)

The men just stared at her for a moment, and she narrowed her eyes.

"Move out!"

Everyone scrambled towards the heap of rubble, and Cassandra sighed. When she returned to the Keep, everyone was going to get a firm talking to about how to handle themselves in battle and how to address and respect their superiors in battle, she would make sure of that. She observed the men work, slowly watching the flickering, pulsating green light amidst the dark stones. Other sounds of things exploding reached her ears, but her experience alone told her that they were too far away for her and her measly, cowardly squad of baby recruits to do anything useful.

Also, she was very curious as to why she had seen a person in the lightning.

"Seeker Cassandra!"

Another young soldier, a boy she didn't recognize with red hair and squinty eyes, bounded over, his basic armor clanking loosely against his thin frame. Under Cassandra's hawk eyes, his shoulders straightened.

"Name, rank, regiment," she demanded.

"Artur, just a footsoldier, ma'am, I was in Ser Evan's command. I got split up from the rest after one of those beasts rolled down a hill with Ser Evan, and I ended up near here," the boy responded, his expression vaguely sheepish. Cassandra crossed her arms.

"What is your report?"

Any other emotion faded off of his youthful face.

"The others, they've found something," he said, glancing over his shoulder to where a small ring of soldiers had gathered around the peak of the hill of shattered stone.

The footsoldier looked uneasy. Cassandra raised her eyebrows.

"Spit it out."

The boy glanced back towards the others.

"Someone, more like."

****  
"Move, let me through," Cassandra ordered, pushing her way through the gawking circle of recruits as her hand went to her hip and grasped at the hilt of her sword. "Back away, I said. Move!"

The soldiers reluctantly parted, save for the one soldier Christos, who was kneeling over something half covered in stone.

"What is it?" Cassandra demanded, approaching cautiously. "What is the catalyst?" Christos looked up, and then got to his feet, stepping back and allowing Cassandra to see properly what had the soldiers so intrigued.

Lying in the middle of the ruins was an elf - an elf, of all things! - with long hair that captured the firelight and made it yellow instead of red, and whose entire lower body was buried in stone and broken bodies. Cassandra couldn't quite see much about the elf's face, other than that it had a few Dalish tattoos and seemed to be contorted in appropriate agony.

"And you all just stood here and stared?" Cassandra barked, glaring at the soldiers. "She is a survivor! Get the rubble off of her!"

The soldiers, embarrassment on their cheeks, set right to damage control, heaving and kicking and shoving a lot of the blackened rock away from the elf. As they worked, the elf began to move, and Cassandra approached, bending on one knee and waving Christos over.

"Wha...? Oh - ow..." the elf groaned, her voice thick with surprise and sudden pain.

"You are alive, we will take you to a place where there is a healer," Cassandra said, going through the dialogue that she had been fed about how to deal with injured survivors. "Can you speak?"

The elf's eyelashes fluttered spasmodically, as if she were trying to force them to work, and then they burst open in a flare of sonic, neon green - a green that matched the Fade's murky sky exactly. The soldiers all ceased to stare and Cassandra had to resist the urge to gasp.

"You are the catalyst," she said, half to herself and half to the elf. "What are you?"

The elf's eyes darted to her as they began to dim, revealing perfectly normal eyes with green irises. They locked onto her face, and Cassandra noticed offhandedly that they weren't Fade green or tainted green at all, but the color of the leaves on an olive branch of peace - not a nasty color by any means.

(Maybe green is not so bad of a color after all, Cassandra contemplated in the back of her mind.)

"I...catalyst?" the elf asked, raising her left hand towards her head. Cassandra had to cover her mouth at the sight of the elf's hand - swathed in electric, smoking magic. And that magic was most certainly Fade green.

(No, Cassandra backtracked. Green is most definitely bad.)

"No, there's..." Her forehead scrunched in confusion, but as the rocks were moved off of her legs, Christos helped her loop one arm around his neck in support. "A demon...a threat...need to get away."

Before Cassandra knew it, her sword was out and the blade was at the elf's throat.

"Right now, you are the only threat I see," Cassandra snarled, ignoring Christos' startled exclamation. "You are going nowhere."

Her eyes flickered from the elf's demon-tainted hand to the elf's eyes. The young woman stared right back of her, gaze appropriately scared and yet unfaltering.

"Who are you? What do you want with us, demon?" Cassandra demanded, pressing the blade closer to the elf's throat.

"I am...no demon!" the elf responded, her expression pleading and her voice raspy with stress and fear. "My name...Solange...Lavellan...alchemist! Strange plants...grow here!"

Cassandra, slightly put off by the answer, backed up slightly.

"Used to...grow here," the elf added as an afterthought. "I got here...then...demons were everywhere...I lost..." The elf paused, coughing, and the sound startled Cassandra enough to bring the sword a bit closer. "Lost...my staff...then lightning...then soldiers here."

Cassandra surveyed the elf for a moment longer, and then glanced at the botanist's glowing, demonic hand, her eyes narrowing in deep rooted hatred.

"Go, now, bring her back to the Keep," Cassandra ordered. "There is work to be done."

Christos nodded, his eyes wide, and then gestured with a nod for one of his fellow soldiers to aid him in situating the injured apostate into his arms.

"Are you...going to kill...?" the elf asked from the side of Christos' arm. Olive eyes met with sienna, and Cassandra's traitorous mind recalled something about how green wasn't so bad after all.

"No. Not yet."

~O~


End file.
